Higher Listenings
A lively look at the trends and people shaping the future of higher education, featuring thought leaders from across the industry. Brought to you by Top Hat.
Higher Listenings
The Power of Play and Evidence-Based Teaching
Post COVID trauma. Learning loss. A growing student mental health crisis. The past few years have left many faculty feeling burned out. Then some bright light in Silicon Valley thought, hey, now seems like the perfect time to add a little AI to the mix. It’s been a lot. So how can we recapture our joie de vivre? Dr. Brad Cohen discusses the power of play in taking on new challenges, upping our teaching game, and opening our minds to AI and … you heard this right … forest bathing.
0:00: Introducing Higher Listenings
8:58: Nurturing Evidence-Based Practice With Play
15:10: Embracing Play and Technology in Teaching
24:32: Exploring Traditional and Emerging Educational Practices
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Welcome to Higher Listenings, a podcast from your friends at Top Hat, offering a lively look at the trends and people shaping the future of higher education. I'm Eric Gardner, Director of Educational Programming.
Speaker 2:And I'm Brad Cohen, Chief Academic Officer.
Speaker 1:Birds do it, rats do it, even paper wasps and crocodiles do it. Seems like almost every creature loves to play. At least, I hope that's what you're thinking. But after another head-spinning year in higher education, play is about as far down the list of priorities as it can get. Looking back the last couple of years, this is pretty understandable.
Speaker 1:Hot on the heels of the pandemic, faculty got back into the classroom only to experience what some have called a stunning level of student disconnection. We had post-COVID trauma, learning loss and a growing mental health crisis. Then some bright light in Silicon Valley thought hey, you know what? Now seems like the perfect time to add a little AI to the mix. It just keeps on coming, doesn't it? I don't think it's left many in a playful mood, because play is usually the first thing to disappear in the face of stress. Yet play is the wellspring of creativity and innovation and arguably the very thing we need to drive meaningful change in the practice of teaching. So let's all take a deep breath, grab your plaster scene and a fresh box of crayons. It's time to play. This week, I'm here with Dr Bradley Cohen, chief Academic Officer at Top Hat and the former Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at Ohio University. This is a slightly awkward introduction because Brad is also the co-host of Hired Listenings, so I guess I should say welcome to our program, dr Cohen.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, Eric. I'm taking this as an exercise in empathy for the participants that'll be in this seat next time around.
Speaker 1:That's great. It's good practice for that, that's for sure. I wanted to turn the tables this week by interviewing you because I know you've been a longtime champion of evidence-based teaching practices, and that might sound a little dry, and I do promise we're going to deliver on the play piece, but for now let's ease into things with a story, because who doesn't like a good story? I want you to think back to your early days as a professor of philosophy. So, according to ChatGBT, you were likely wearing a blazer with a cardigan and I love this detail a scarf, but with minimal jewelry. Does that seem about right to you, brad?
Speaker 2:Yeah, hilarious. I became a philosophy professor, just so I wouldn't have to wear a blazer or anything resembling a suit.
Speaker 1:Okay, good to know it's changing the picture I have in my mind. So perhaps you had a couple semesters under your belt. Picture I have in my mind, but so perhaps you had a couple semesters under your belt. So what I'm wondering is if at some point you had experienced an aha moment when you thought it might be time to think a bit differently about your approach to teaching.
Speaker 2:I would say it was less an aha moment than maybe something like a one-two punch. I was, I think, in my second year on the tenure track as a philosophy professor and I had a mentor who challenged me very directly. I was receiving very strong reviews from students in the student writing of teaching process, so I was becoming well-known as a popular and good professor on campus. And he challenged me directly by saying something like to follow me. Yeah, so they like you. How do you know you're doing them any good? How do you know they're actually developing in any way that you intend for them to develop?
Speaker 2:And that set me on the path of looking for data. What could I do to understand over time that my students were actually developing in the ways that I intended for them to develop, that the way the course was set up for them to develop? And so that was my first step. And the second came about a year later, two years later, when the publication of Bransford's how People Learn emerged in 2000, 2001. That publication expressed the state of the state of knowledge regarding how people learn, and that set me on the path of really trying to design my courses intentionally with those principles in mind, and that's what evidence-based practice really is. It's it's using the evidence regarding what we know about how people learn in the design and delivery of the course, and using data to iterate your way forward in that experience, and those two things are really what set me on that path so, from exploring the big questions, and not only in philosophy but thinking about your teaching practice, you actually went on to lead the Center for Educational Innovation at the University of Minnesota.
Speaker 1:So the cardigans and the scarves I imagine at that point probably went back into the closet, I'm guessing.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:So, and then from there, you were recruited to Ohio University, where you ultimately served as the chief strategy and innovation officer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, despite my best laid plans, I ended up in a suit.
Speaker 1:Well, you wear it well and it sounds like it might've been slightly more comfortable than what chat GPT had in mind for you at any rate. So throughout all this, you've really been beating the drum on evidence-based teaching practice, and I imagine that's led to many dinner party invitations, I would think oh yes, I'm very popular.
Speaker 2:And I can see why, because I know you're fond of making a rather vivid comparison between hospitals and universities. Can you take us through that healthcare or education today as where healthcare was at the turn of the 20th century? It was a time when there was an incredible explosion in evidence regarding how to care for human beings and there was a dramatic rise in technology, in new tools and new ways to get data regarding how the human body is responding to various things. New pharmaceutical innovations were emerging. So it was a time of dramatic change and a real shift from tradition and craft toward evidence and understanding, a science-based approach to health care. And then hospitals emerged as these organizations that sought over time to perfect that process, to really insist on evidence-based practice as a norm, and I think it's useful to think about education as being on that journey.
Speaker 2:Right now we know a lot about how people learn, but there is a lot of craft still involved in teaching and there's a lot of system work that has to unfold in order for us to be in a position where I found my brother, who's a physician. This all started because I had a conversation with him he's an administrator and a doctor and I asked him about evidence-based practice in medicine and it took me about two hours to get him to appreciate my question. Because the evidence-based practice is so deeply embedded in healthcare today it's really hard to see it as a goal, as something that has to be managed, because it's sort of built into every element of the practice into every element of the practice.
Speaker 1:So I had this image in my head of the English department, gathered around a table, having a very pointed conversation with my professor about what he could have done to get me to wrap my head around. Ulysses oh God, ulysses, it's defeated me twice. I'm in the same camp for sure. Now I'm going to play the contrary in here because, you know, the vision you laid out isn't exactly what I would call playful. It's pretty sort of scientific and rigorous. But all joking aside, I do think that there's a need to try and lighten the mood.
Speaker 1:So remember the pandemic years. It wasn't that long ago. So we saw a surge right in interest in student-centered teaching. There's workshops on engaging students and active learning Attracted wide audiences. Teaching advice books flew off the shelves and certainly our friends in the Centers for Teaching and Learning all of a sudden became A-list celebrities. But then fast forward to today and in many corners I think there seems to be a growing weariness with teaching innovations. There's student mental health, lack of student engagement, to say nothing of all the judgment that seems to be leveled at how faculty teach. And then this whole AI thing comes along and everyone's thrown for a loop. It's a lot. In a recent essay, sarah Rose Kavanagh wrote that we may actually be witnessing a growing backlash against student-centered teaching. So how do you think about balancing the fact that faculty need to be able to trust their intuition, enjoy their autonomy, manage their workload and hopefully have some semblance of a personal life, while continuing to improve the quality and impact of their instruction?
Speaker 2:Wow, there's a lot going on there.
Speaker 2:I do think, first of all, I really loved her essay and so I think she's pointing to something really important about the maybe over-indexing on student concerns, on the student perspective regarding teaching, and a lot of that I think is appropriate. It's an appropriate corrected. I think you've connected that to, as she did, to the fact that faculty are besieged on all sides, and so I do think it's really important in this conversation around evidence-based practice, to recognize a couple of things. First, we have to respect the wisdom of teachers, the wisdom of practitioners. I referenced earlier teaching as a craft. I believe that deeply, and a craft is something that avails itself of science as well as experience, and one of the things I think was excellent about the Bransford book that came out in 2001 was its sensitivity to that fact. It was routinely making connections between what the evidence was showing and the fact that the wisdom of teachers has already discovered much of this that's compatible with there being discoveries in the future that actually contradict what our instincts as experienced teachers might tell us is effective. So I think we have to be open to that. But here the question is, how do we nurture development but also respect and be sensitive to the limitations that faculty have today. I mean, you know, a majority of instructors on some campuses are adjuncts. Their time is extraordinarily compressed their time to commit to professional development of this sort. Faculty may be in a very significant moment in their tenure path or in the process of writing a grant. So we have to be really sensitive to the situation in which faculty find themselves. When we're trying to work with them to develop their practice, or when they're trying to develop their practice, we also have to understand.
Speaker 2:I think there is a big gap between what the evidence tells us in general and what will work in my class with my students in this particular discipline. So I think some humility there is in order. So I think there's a lot that we can do to pull back from this imposition of you know you have to change your practice overnight and become an expert evidence-based practitioner. I think we have to respect that. This is something that will evolve over time, like any good craft. What we should be expecting is that increasingly we are aiming in that direction and I think a lot of support needs to come from the institution itself. How is the institution creating the conditions for a pursuit of evidence-based practice? How are they helping and stewarding that evolution over time. I think that's really critical.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure, and you know, it really does seem like it's a minefield these days, you know, and like, in some cases, more flexibility is good for some students, right, and it's a disaster for others. You can ask my 16 year old about that. Icebreaker exercises invariably, you know, alienate some students and, frankly, make some professors uncomfortable. The traditional lecture it's much maligned, even though it certainly has a place in education. Lecture it's much maligned, even though it certainly has a place in education. And if faculty don't have enough to keep them up at night, I suggest they worry about the psychological toll their high stakes exams are exacting on students. Like I said, it's a minefield, right.
Speaker 1:But amid all those choices, the lack of clarity, the weariness, I did find some good news. Brad, Did you know that on July 11th, that was the first ever UN International Day of Play? It sounds a lot more fun than some of the other international days. So I did some research on this. Apparently there's a World Television Day or the International Day of the Potato or, my favorite World Intellectual Property Day, which are all quite real but perhaps not as widely celebrated as the UN might like. Now, I didn't know this, but according to research, crocodiles, turtles, paper wasps and even my mother-in-law have been shown to engage in play-like behavior, and it makes me wonder how bringing a sense of play and curiosity might be just the thing we need to move the needle on teaching practice in higher education, especially in this current climate that we're in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you know, as you know, I, some years ago, I gave a keynote address on the relationship between play, creativity and innovation, and I discovered these, some of these facts about, about nature, play in nature, and, if you think about it, play is it's odd that it exists in in the natural world. It's costly, right, animals can get hurt during play. It takes energy that isn't really obviously productive of anything. It's not like you're, you know, tracking down the next meal and so so it's emergence is itself a thing of interest. You know, play is obviously something that creates the conditions, the kind of foundation for creativity. Its benefits are affective, cognitive, psychosocial, and so the act of playing and playfulness is really kind of fuel for creativity, and the relationship between creativity and innovation is also, if you think about it, pretty obvious. Innovation requires some ideas that may or may not pan out as innovations, and John Emmerling, I think it was, who said that innovation is creativity with a job to do. I love that, yeah.
Speaker 2:So you get play that fuels creativity, creativity that fuels innovation, and so I think it's this really important ingredient that we need to embrace and really try to prioritize, particularly in a world in which there's so much stress, because one of the things that we know is that stress actually impedes play In the natural world. I think it's really something to cultivate, and it's necessary, in my view, for us to be able to innovate.
Speaker 1:And it's a challenge because there's a lot to deal with, a lot of pressure, as you mentioned. So I'm just wondering about, like how we can, how that overworked, overstretched faculty member who's now expected to wrap their head around AI and evidence-based practice and you know a myriad of other things Like how do we help those folks or what guidance would you offer around reclaiming a sense of play so that they can actually sort of experiment and explore and maybe see what sticks and bring that into their practice?
Speaker 2:Well, the first thing I would suggest is to work to create the commitment you know like. Decide that you're going to prioritize play, the way people decide they're going to prioritize exercise, and then you know you have to intentionally work against the, the stress that's, that's impeding play. So you know how, how might you do that? I'm I'm a fan of force beating. I don't know if you've heard that expression, but yeah, basically it's a walk in the forest to walk in the woods.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, so you're okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no bathrobe required or anything like that yeah, yeah, not getting naked and you know rubbing leaves all over yourself, right, but really going out in the woods and taking a walk. I think gratitude practice is another way to kind of create. You know the, the inner, you know environment. You need the energy that you need, but you know, like if they could tell you make it. And I would say, if there are any leaders listening to this talk, it's an opportunity from a leadership perspective, to cultivate a culture in your team or across your organization that encourages play, that recognizes the value of play.
Speaker 2:I had a mentor who showed me the value of doing that and really successful companies and organizations. They're very intentional about this and so, as an individual, form the intention and carry it out. As an organization, form the intention and carry it out. I also think you know there's strength in numbers. Try to find others that you can play with. You know I'm a proponent of faculty learning communities as a structure for growth within a community of educators, as a structure for growth within a community of educators, and those kinds of communities can gather and have fun while exploring a new way of teaching or an idea about teaching.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting because it's about lowering the stakes. So I think, if we can remove that pressure and enjoy it, explore and also, I think, not attaching to an outcome either, necessarily, you know, at least initially- Initially.
Speaker 2:I think it's really important. I think you know the first thing we need to recognize is teaching students successfully in large numbers is really hard. Like it's not a simple matter to say oh, here's what we know about how people learn. I simply have to put that into play in my course and everything will be fine. It's just not the way it works, so expect failure. It's known that the first time I try a new teaching practice, there's a high likelihood I will fail. I won't get it right, but I'll learn from that. So I think lowering the stakes being okay with the fact that you may not get it right the first time or the second time, but you're moving toward an ideal state of being an evidence-based practitioner, creating the highest likelihood that your student will be successful.
Speaker 1:So technology is a source of play for some, like my neighbor who plays Call of Duty the moment he puts his daughter to bed. I can actually see him doing that but it's also been a contributor to the stress. I think a lot of faculty are feeling so just when some of us are getting comfortable with the LMS I know that's been around for a while, or maybe it's using PowerPoint in the cloud, you know AI comes along and starts to upend our assignments and assessments. But I think, more than this, there's a new set of expectations. Like now, we've got to start preparing students to succeed in an AI infused world, because they are going to be expected to be able to use those tools and harness them in the workplace. But you see technology as a compliment, or maybe it's another option with respect to advancing our teaching practice. So what's different in terms of this and some of the traditional approaches to faculty development?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So first, I guess, is admission I'm an early adopter. I'm an unabashed advocate for the value of technology in the teaching and learning enterprise when used well, for the value of technology in the teaching and learning enterprise when used well. But I also acknowledge, as you laid out in asking this question, it is another challenge that has to be overcome. I have to learn this technology, I have to figure out how it works in my course. But I think there's a different way to come at this, and really it is by thinking about technology as itself changing the environment in a productive way for faculty and students. In other words, one way to improve your teaching practice is to do some professional development. You know, read about how people learn, take a professional development course from a center for teacher learning, faculty learning, community, whatever. But another way for the conditions of teaching to evolve toward evidence-based practice is to change the environment in ways that nudge faculty and students in the right direction.
Speaker 2:So, one of the big projects I worked at at the University of Minnesota with a large team was on active learning classrooms, and it turns out that if you change the design of a physical classroom, you will change behaviors in ways that have positive outcomes for students, and so I think you can apply that same expectation to the digital environment. As we evolve a digital environment, you can see behaviors moving in productive directions, so I think there's the potential for the introduction of AI in the environment to sort of naturally lead to some good practices that are, in fact, evidence-based in nature.
Speaker 1:It already seems like it's doing that to some extent, maybe a little more abruptly than some faculty might like. You know, just calling into question, you know, some of the assessments or assignment types that we've been mainstays, frankly, for decades in higher education. Now, all of a sudden, you know there's a risk of plagiarism, or you know academic integrity at play there. That's forcing a change, that's maybe moving a little faster than faculty would like.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I mean, I think the first thing it did and really unproductively thank you very much, jack and APT or OpenAI. The first thing it did right in the middle of the semester, frankly, was undermine traditional assessment practices overnight. And if you think about it, traditional assessment practice is a bit weird. I mean, I was a philosophy professor. I had my students writing essays all the time. But over time I was sensitive to the fact that the you know sort of early versions of my assessments were very peculiar. I mean, why am I asking the same 30 students write the same essay to me? That is only going to be read by me. That has nothing to do with anything they care about you must have really loved the topic, Brad.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm thinking.
Speaker 2:I did Right. Right, I was hoping for some ideas. So, yes, over time I evolved that practice and I think it called into question some traditional practices that are appropriately called into question. What it didn't do is offer a replacement overnight, right, or? What's been interesting to me to see is a lot of survey data is starting to emerge and students are naturally. Some students cheat they always have, they always will. It's easier for those who will cheat to cheat, but evidence indicates that it's not more prevalent. What they're doing is using AI to quiz them. They're using AI to render text that they can't understand in language they can understand.
Speaker 1:Like Descartes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like Descartes, for instance. So yes, so I think that there's an opportunity for faculty to do the same, to leverage AI to help them evolve their practice, and students are using it as a coach. Faculty can more effectively help students use it as a coach, I think, and faculty can use it as a coach themselves. I think they can discover some really interesting ways forward in their teaching practice. I've been doing a lot of play in that space, actually.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, ai is something between maybe a nudge and a shove in terms of changing how we actually teach and what we actually ask students to do. So let's play. We talked about play, or rather maybe some debate. So you're an early adopter of technologies. You've already acknowledged you'd love to play with it, and I imagine that goes with the territory. As a chief strategy and innovation officer, if you're probably not an early adopter of technology and naturally curious, it's not the best role for you. So, with that in mind, I actually asked OpenAI to create the toughest question I could think of for you Brad Are you ready for this?
Speaker 2:This doesn't really sound like play, Eric.
Speaker 1:Well, it's playful for me at this point. So if you had to defend traditional teaching methods to a panel of evidence-based teaching advocates, what would you say?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, first, I would say the best answer would be really contextual. I think there is a clear gap between the general insights that cognitive science and other sources of information about how people learn. There's a gap between those discoveries and the contextualized application that is necessary in a classroom, application that is necessary in a classroom. So I might want to leave it to others to find a way forward in my discipline at this level with these students and then, once it's proven, adapt that practice in my own classroom.
Speaker 2:I think another is that traditional teaching does work. It may not work for all students in all ways, but there are an awful lot of very highly educated people who are extremely effective in their roles as adults, who emerged from this very traditional environment, and so I do think there is some space for pointing to the practices as having value. And that connects to something else. I would would say we don't just throw out well you know, hard earned practices just because something new comes along, and many of us will remember that the the faddishness that impacted higher ed in the, you know, mid two thousands, with learning styles as a kind of you know a very clear example of that kind of you know overwrought like we all have to embrace this new paradigm from a single bit of research that was later proven to be false.
Speaker 2:So I think being cautious in adopting those practices is a defensible position. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was just thinking about that. I always thought of myself as a visual learner, yet I love podcasts. There you go.
Speaker 2:Now, that was hard for me, Eric. I'm a champion of evidence-based practice. I want to talk to the person I just was a minute ago and say, look, there's a way forward here.
Speaker 1:That was good. I thought that was pretty convincing, actually. Okay, so we're going to try another one. So what argument would you make to folks who may be wary or reluctant to embrace AI, or at least to explore it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So let me first just say we are in the peak of inflated expectations around AI, and it's evolving so rapidly.
Speaker 2:What we're even talking about may look very different in six months from what it looks like now, so I think it's okay to be a bit hesitant to dive in, but I do think, as educators, it's really important to find your way forward, to step into the pool in some capacity, partly because it's a responsibility.
Speaker 2:Ai is going to be here to stay, responsibility ai is going to be here to stay, and so the, the students that we're teaching, are going to be in an ai enabled world, and and we have a responsibility to do something to prepare them. So I do think it's important to at least step in and begin to understand it. But I also think it's an opportunity, as an educator, to think about not just how it might play out in your discipline, but how it might actually help you and your students in the classroom. You know, if you had access to a technology that would improve your teaching skill, improve your ability to reach students, improve their ability to learn, why wouldn't you explore that? And so I think there's urgency to at least get acquainted with this technology and start to play with it.
Speaker 1:So, speaking of that playing with AI, what would you recommend? Where did you start? Or how do you have a little bit of fun with this, rather than plunging in and saying, redesign my syllabus, getting into the weeds right away?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think playfully approaching AI is the best way to start. I saw a headline recently, an article, that said something like higher ed is not a musical. And so I immediately went to a variety of AI systems, including ChatGPT, and said draft me a musical about higher ed. And that went on through several exchanges, because the first thing it gave me was kind of this crappy, you know, student-centered perspective of you know coming of age.
Speaker 2:I was like, not that, give me something from the faculty perspective. Then I said give me something from the administrator perspective. Then I said make it a comedy, you know. And so you can go on in these ways and and, like you know, really kind of go back and forth and press it, you know, seek to to trip it up, seek to get it to hallucinate, seek to to get it to do something it can't do, and just start to understand what this thing might be capable of as something that you can then react to and iterate with in a in a really interesting way. It's a. It's a very different technology, very different than a search experience, right, and so I think just stepping in and playing is the way to get started.
Speaker 1:And it's also through that play too that I've realized, you know just, the prompt engineering skill that's important to develop. That becomes fairly clear, or became obvious to me early on, when I was playing with, with chat GPT in particular, that, okay, this is a skill I need to get a little sharper with if I'm actually going to get an output that that meets my sort of hope and expectation, you know so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what's really interesting is you can, you can actually ask it to help you. Like, if you're, if you really are caught, you know you're unsure of how to start ask it. How do I start to interact with you? And it will actually start to interact with you in ways that are interesting.
Speaker 1:It's funny. So I really love this. And I remember the first time I used AI I had a plan, a travel itinerary for a trip we did to Utah. I think it was a little aggressive in terms of what it gave us to do. We had a number of stops in one day and I think we got four to the five, but might've dialed that back a little bit, but it was, it was helpful. And then I got a bit more serious by having it to help me argue unsuccessfully, I might add for a raise.
Speaker 1:But I digress a little bit here, sorry about that. That's okay, brad, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll rework my query there, my prompt, and see if I can come up with the win. But there really is something to that idea of lowering the stakes, using it to explore something we're actually interested in, or just to poke around and have some fun and see where it takes us, because I think a lot of times that's when the magic happens. So we couldn't help talking about AI and evidence-based practice and we're going to actually talk about all this and more with some pretty awesome guests.
Speaker 2:Not that you haven't done a wonderful job here, brad. How about we give listeners a sense of what they can expect for the first season of Higher Listenings? Jesse Stommel, who recently published a book Undoing the Grade why Be Great and how to Stop it. I love the title of this talk. Do we really want AIs that? Apologize, I don't know, but we're going to find out.
Speaker 1:I'm really excited about our episode on AI in the Classroom, featuring none other than Mr Energy and a former bandmate, interestingly enough, to Liberace, jose Antonio Bowen. So Jose just published his latest book, teaching with AI, so we're going to ask him about how we can put AI to work in the classroom, but without overshadowing our own human capabilities and sense of agency, and I think that's really important for all of us and for students to be cognizant of that as well. No-transcript. No, it's an interesting idea that might just be crazy enough to work. Well, that was just a sneak peek of some of what we have in store, and with that, I want to thank you, brad, for being such a good sport, and thanks to all of you for tuning in.
Speaker 2:Thanks, eric, we'll see you all soon.
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